Chapter 2: The Exit Nobody Saw
Claire snatched the authorization from my hand and folded it once, hiding the signature inside.
“Don’t leave through the lobby,” she whispered.
A chair scraped in the outer office. Then Travis’s voice carried through the door, easy and close.
“Claire? You still here?”
She grabbed my sleeve and steered me toward the narrow service door behind the filing cabinet.
“My cart,” I whispered.
“Leave it.”
The thought of my cart standing in Travis’s office—my gloves on the handle, the cleaning spray beside his walnut desk—felt like leaving a piece of myself behind. But the handle rattled under my grip, too loud. I let go.
Claire eased the door open. We slipped into a dim corridor that smelled of dust and floor wax, then walked fast without running. Behind us, Travis called her name again.
At the stairwell, Claire stopped and looked at me.
“Keep your head down. If he sees you, don’t explain anything.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Her eyes held mine for a beat. “Good.”
We took the stairs to the service level. The door opened on the loading area, where the night air slipped beneath the bay doors and touched my face like cold water. Claire’s car was parked beside the dumpsters. She unlocked it, and I climbed in with the folded paper clenched in my fist.
Only when she started the engine did I realize I was still wearing my cleaning gloves.
I peeled them off finger by finger. The latex snapped softly, and I shoved them into my pocket.
“Did Travis see you take the paper?” I asked.
“No.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Claire kept her gaze on the dark exit ramp. “I don’t know.”
The answer sat between us as she drove.
We stopped several blocks away in the parking lot of a laundromat with its lights off and a paper sign taped across the locked door. Claire pulled into the far corner, away from the streetlamp. She didn’t turn off the engine.
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. In the dark window, our reflections looked like two strangers waiting for someone else to arrive.
Then Claire took a thin folder from her bag.
“I made a copy of the authorization before it disappeared,” she said. “The one you found in your pocket is yours to keep. This one is mine.”
“You took it from Travis’s office?”
“From the printer tray. It had been left there with other transfer paperwork.” Her mouth tightened. “I should have told you that before.”
“You should have told me a lot of things.”
She flinched, but didn’t argue. Instead, she opened the folder and showed me the second copy. The amount, the destination line, the date—everything matched the page I’d found. It still didn’t tell me who had made it, or who had put it in my uniform.
“Why keep this?” I asked.
“Because I knew he’d deny it if he realized what I’d seen.”
“Did you know he was using my badge?”
Her fingers paused on the paper.
“No.”
It might have been true. It might have been the first safe answer she could find. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Claire pulled a printout from the folder. It was the scan of the supplier-credit guarantee I’d seen on her screen. The old kitchen-table document, gray and slightly crooked, with Travis’s name beside mine.
My stomach tightened at the sight of it. Not because I needed to compare the signature again. I already knew what I’d seen. It was the thought of that evening—my children asleep upstairs, pasta boiling over, Travis telling me the supplier had given us one more chance.
Claire pointed to the printed image.
“Look at the bottom edge.”
A faint shadow ran beneath my signature, like a smudge from the scanner. On the transfer authorization, the signature sat a little too cleanly against the line. The lower stroke ended in a tiny, sharp hook.
“That isn’t how a pen lifts,” I said.
Claire nodded. “It looks like the same image was placed over the authorization line.”
The word “looks” mattered. I heard the caution in it. A scan could show that something was wrong; it couldn’t tell us whose hands had done it.
“Can anyone prove where this scan came from?” I asked.
“Not from this printout alone.”
“So it proves nothing.”
“It proves what it shows. The original file, the document history, the transfer records—that’s different.” Claire closed the folder. “I saved what I could before the files were changed.”
I looked at her. “You’re asking me to trust you with evidence, after you helped build the access history?”
“I didn’t build it.”
“You were the one standing beside the computer.”
Her face went pale beneath the car’s dashboard glow. “I know.”
It wasn’t an apology, but it was closer than her earlier answers.
I looked down at the copy in my hands. My name seemed strange there, less like a signature than a door someone had opened without asking.
“You don’t have to forgive me tonight,” Claire said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She nodded once, accepting it.
My phone buzzed. I startled so hard the paper slid against my palm.
A message from my cleaning supervisor filled the screen.
Travis Fenwick has requested your access logs. He wants you questioned before your next shift. Call me as soon as you can.
I read it twice. The laundromat’s dark windows reflected my face, but I barely recognized the woman staring back.
“He knows,” I said.
Claire leaned closer. “Knows what?”
“That I heard him. Or he thinks I did.” I swallowed. “Either way, he’s already telling people there’s a reason to question me.”
My badge was still clipped to my uniform. I unclasped it, but the little plastic card left a pale rectangle in the fabric where it had rested.
The first message had said my badge opened the records room while I was under Travis’s desk. Now my supervisor knew Travis wanted my access history, too. One record said I’d gone somewhere I hadn’t. Another person was being asked to treat that claim as fact.
I turned the badge over in my hand.
A phone number appeared beneath my supervisor’s message. I didn’t know whether calling would help, or give Travis one more chance to tell the story first.
May you like
Before I could decide, another message arrived.
He says you need to explain what you did in the records room. He’s waiting to speak with you.
